Delicate Prey: And Other Stories

ISBN: 0061137340

Author: Bowles, Paul

Condition: New

Paul Bowless classic collection of short stories, now available in a a deluxe paperback edition-part of Eccos Art of the Story seriesAll the tales are a variety of detective story, wrote Bowles of this, his first short story collection, in which the reader is the detective; the mystery is in the motivation for the charcters behavior. In such stories as A Distant Episode and How Many Midnights, Bowles pushes human character beyond socially defined limits and maps a transformed (often horribly transformed) reality.Bowles captures the duality of human frailty and cruelty in these seventeen taut and atmospheric tales, written between 1939 and 1949. Brutal and gorgeous, visceral yet profound, this timeless collection is one of the most profound, beautifully wrought, and haunting collections in our literature. . . at once austere, witty, violent, and sensuous. . . . His language has a purity of line, a poise and authority entirely its own, capable of instantly modulating from farce to horror without a ruffle (Tobias Wolff).